My practice revolves primarily around photography, collage, and sound. My current body of work is a socially engaged practice that seeks to understand practice and give a voice to the community.
On Erasmus, I first started engaging more with the concept of community through video and photography. It was talking first-hand to people and creating a portrait through my experience, video, and photography.
Personal and open archives of photographs, postcards, books, and objects have always been a basis for everything I make within my practice. The purpose of opening up a conversation about these archives comes from a desire to acknowledge and comprehend the past’s relevance in understanding the present day.
Caryatid; Both Night and Day
A Caryatid is a sculptural figure that serves as an architectural support, like that of a column or pillar, holding the structure on its head. My work is a socially engaged practice focusing on my community's elders, the inhabitants, and the habitat, through found objects, photography, print, collage and sound. Through my work, I am documenting my own community in Rialto and the areas adjacent. I practice this through anonymity, obscuring the face and emphasising body language and letting the elements of their home speak for them.
The incorporation of sound, or lack thereof, from a reel-to-reel machine from the 1960s, operates as a mechanism, conveying particular aspects of ageing, where one keeps moving, yet there is no song to belt out, hum or serenade.
I like to think of the people I’ve photographed as caryatids; without them, the house would no longer be cared for. The concept of community is held together by not one, but many.
